I think there's a bigger picture here that can fill the gap in between those upset with this transaction and those understanding that Morey couldn't do it now. That bigger story is that this inability to acquire Grant (or add meaningful talent nowadays) is a culmination of the cost saving moves Tilman has forced Morey to do since buying the team (give away 2 FRP, 1 SRP, not use last year's MLE, not resign Ariza, and TBD with Anderson/Knight/Shumpert). All of those player/asset giveaways were to save money. Ariza, if kept, could have been traded last year for an exception. Trading for exceptions was something the Rockets used to do to maintain flexibility. They've just become asset depleted and much less flexible the last two seasons.
A+ post - way to put it all together. The moral of the story is HOW you move a player on/off your team is just as important as WHO you are moving. We undoubtedly as a forum tend to focus on the 'who', but it's the "how" that has changed significantly in Tillman's tenure and whether you do or don't believe in Grant's fit on this team, the real story is that we had no options available to us for the "how" and Denver did.
Nobody in the league has the cap space to do that deal (including Denver). The only way to do it was if you had a $10m trade exception. You're blaming Morey because we don't have a $10m trade exception?
So everyone believes that the Rockets should have resigned Trevor Ariza last year? He was terrible last year. His new deal is crazy.
None of those cost saving moves that you mentioned have any effect on our ability to do a Grant deal like Denver did. Ariza made $15m last year. I'm not sure why you think that it would have been easy to trade him and take no money back. Not too many teams had that much cap space. It would have likely cost a first to move him for no salary in return if you could find a team with the space. Not to mention that posters here would have freaked out if we had signed him and later traded him. Have the Rockets ever had a $10m exception? The largest I can remember was around $8m. Maybe theres a larger one that I'm forgetting.
Can you explain which players we got rid of that you feel that we should have been able to create a TPE for? Who were the guys that we were trading for all these TPEs prior to Fertitta owning the team? BTW we currently have 9 separate Traded Player Exceptions. It's just that the largest is $3.6m and you cant aggregate them.
This is hypothetical (since my bigger point is about asset flexibility), but I think a 2 year $25 deal would have been doable. Iirc, reporting is that the Rockets didn't even try due to luxury tax restrictions. At least 3 teams have wanted him: Phoenix, DC, and Sacramento. Hypothetically, we could have sent him to Philly instead of Wilson Chandler for the exception that got Grant. The bigger picture for me is that so many moves have been mainly about saving money. And it's not just players, but also cutting the scouting department iirc. I will support our Rockets almost to the end because they're like family, but it's like supporting your cousin who has a slimy big talker dad. The dad needs to be called out at every family meeting.
I agree he had a down shooting year. As a Wizards follower, I promise Scotty Brooks praised the hell out of his defense. My bigger point is that the Rockets lost him for nothing only to save money and that Tilman talks a big game, but has consistently forced Morey to make cost saving moves. All of those moves incur future costs of roster flexibility and diminished talent.
I thought Phoenix had cap space last year - couldn't we have used that info to sign Ariza and trade him to Phoenix to generate a TPE?
Ariza slipped across the board. He's still obviously a very smart player which makes him still effective but I saw him get burned several times in ways that his length could no longer cover for. Add to that the always shaky shooting and his overall value starts to decline quite a bit because it was always reliant on him being an A+ defender.
A few points: Phoenix did a series of deals last year to effectively sell off their cap space for assets. So what are you going to give them to get you to help out the Rockets in a deal that has no benefit to them? Are you going to include a 1st in order to get an exception that you may or may not use? Ariza signed really quickly and I don't believe that he was incented to help us out. Since Ariza got a large raise, he's has Base Year Compensation (BYC) for the Rockets. Basically, it means that for trade purposes he only counts $7.5M to the Rockets in a sign and trade. Do you give up compensation to get Phoenix to turn it into a SnT in order to generate a $7.5M trade exception that you have to use in a year or lose? It's a risky move as most large trade exceptions never get used. Dallas just renounced the largest TPE ever awarded ($21M). Any TPE that you have also counts against the cap. BTW even if you had done a sign and trade for Ariza, the TPE wouldn't be big enough to absorb Grant's salary.
Before this year, there had only been four sign and trades under the current CBA. It takes a very special situation to engineer one to work for both parties and little incentive for either the player or receiving team. People keep throwing that idea around like it is 2009.
The Rockets were chasing Lebron and they weren't going to commit to Ariza until they knew if Lebron would come. Ariza was one of the very first FA to sign. So, let's say that you signed Ariza for 2 years/$25M deal. What would you give Philly to take Ariza into their cap space? They got a 2nd to take Wilson's expiring deal. Do you give them a 1st to take Ariza with an additional $12.5M on his deal? Would Philly do that? They ended up flipping Wilson as salary filler in the Tobias Harris trade. Ariza with an additional year on his deal wouldn't have been as easy to include. Ariza is definitely a larger monetary committment and would have given then less flexibility as he wouldn't be as good of a salary matching trade chip. What do you give Philly to take that salary? That's not even figuring in Denver competing to dump salary. Moving Wilson into cap space saved them $40M dollars. For that type of savings, how much do you think that the Nuggets would have been willing to offer to get Philly to take Wilson. There's no guarentee that you could have gotten Philly or anyone else to take Ariza into cap space and if you could, it was going to cost you. Any idea how mental (more so than usual) this board would have been if we'd have signed Ariza and then traded him a few months later?
Fair point - forgot about the BYC rules. There is a reason I just wait for BimaThug's posts about cap implications.
Have you seen how mental people are that we haven't signed anyone new? Clutchfans gonna rage regardless....for better or worse.
Maybe yes to the first since we gave it anyways. But point made. I'm sure if we gave him$15, we could have flipped him for Austin and Oubre because that's the exact package. Hell, maybe he would have taken $10 bc reports were his offer was nothing. Anyhow, I'm only on my phone today so I won't research it enough to argue all night, and it's not a hill I care to die on (the hypothetical situations of how they'd acquire Grant). Peolple do go crazy here, but I think it's more than fair to point out that Tilman has been talking big but taking several measures to reduce expenditures. And my big picture argument is that it hurts the team.
